Thin Provisioning is a technology that reduces physical storage deployment by virtual storage techniques that maximize available storage use.

Storage system growth continues year on year. Concerns about ensuring there is enough available storage tend to encourage users to deploy more physical storage that they don't actually need - "just to be safe". However, in practice the allocated capacity is often under-utilized. Industry research organizations have even stated that in some cases only 20 to 30 percents of deployed capacity is actually used. Thin Provisioning technology has therefore been developed to enable effective use of available storage capacity for better return on investment.

With Thin Provisioning, the total overall user capacity is only allocated as virtual storage. Then actual physical disk capacity is allocated as and when it is needed. All physical disks are managed as a single disk pool and allocated according to the amount of data written to the virtual volumes. This reduces the amount of unused physical disk capacity and creates a much more effective storage operation. In addition, pre-defined thresholds avoid storage capacity shortages by warning when additional physical disks need to be added.

Technical Specifications

Specifications are provided by the manufacturer. Refer to the manufacturer for an explanation
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